I had forgotten
I had so much fun this evening with the Help Club mamas! The wild winter storm outside downgraded the quality of the video, but the audio was just fine. It was so special to have a semblance of sisterhood in my frigid bedroom a billion miles away from my actual sister.
I introduced my family with the shortest possible version of our crazy story. I love telling our story - every single time. In this particular teaching, I was sharing about how our story looks and sounds like a fairy tale from the pictures and posts. Right down to the white wild horse running behind us as we shot wedding photos.
I shared with my Help Club sisters that, as beautiful as it is, our story has not been without pain. I shared about the depth of despair and disappointment I’ve experienced lately. I’ve not been disappointed in Chris, but in life not looking like I thought it would. I shared my silly dream of living on a safe, white picket fenced cul-de-sac with all of my extended family. Of cul-de-sac cousin parties with country music, brisket, iced tea and watermelon. Of tubing the Guadalupe River and always having a NaNa on the front porch in the mornings. After 5 years of not seeing my family, no more NaNa, and having children who have not met their grandparents, much less their cousins, I got stuck in the rut of disappointment - the first step toward resentment and bitterness.
But you know what?
2010
As I started from my beginning with Lifa, I remembered... because somehow I had forgotten... that deciding to be Lifa’s mom meant giving up the cul-de-sac dream and the freedom to live the way I longed to - even if my longings weren’t inherently bad. I took marriage and other family off the table because the circumstances were so (and are still so) complex. I cried hours of tears back then. Days and weeks of them. How could I forget that!?!
I couldn’t fully communicate the depth of the despair I’ve known recently with the sisters on the other side of the screen because I had just remembered that I’d been there before. I’d been at that place of surrendering expectations, hopes and dreams to a God who knows better.
I can’t fathom life without Lifa. Without him being the one who made me a mom. Without this beautiful family God has given me. There is no hope or dream that could be better than them.
I’ve got lots of other hopes and dreams - and plenty of dashed and disappointed expectations. I can hold them, harbor them and grow bitter roots to feed my family from. Or I can cry as many hours as it takes to keep giving them back to God and tell him, “I remember what You did before, and I believe You can do it again.”
Tell your stories as many times as it takes to remember what God did and who God is. Tell the true version about the Son of Man who came and exchanged His life for yours and Who dreams of exchanging His higher, better, greater hopes for your story with yours.
Now to Him who is able to [carry out His purpose and] do superabundantly more than all that we dare ask or think [infinitely beyond our greatest prayers, hopes, or dreams], according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen. Ephesians 3:20-21 AMP